Cheating During Online Exams
Online exams provide a convenient and accurate means of evaluating student abilities; however, students may resort to cheating during these tests which could distort results and produce inaccurate evaluation of actual ability levels of students.
Unsupervised online exams create the same risk. Students could submit exam material even when being monitored remotely by an examiner via webcam.
1. Copying Answers
Technology can be an amazing thing, but its proliferation has enabled cheaters to devise devices that allow them to bypass proctoring software and gain access to test materials online. One such device is screen mirroring or sharing, which enables students to use two monitors during an exam to access questions and answers while sharing it with friends or experts afterwards. Students have even been known to use small Bluetooth devices to transmit this data during an online test!
These devices make cheating harder to detect than ever, making it hard for teachers and educators to monitor. Some students have been caught using such tools during exams while others have been accused of “content leakage,” or the unauthorised distribution of test material by third parties without authorization, which compromises online exam integrity and makes identifying cheating individuals more challenging than ever.
Some students employ this form of cheating because they believe it to be charitable; they feel as though they are helping fraternity brothers, sorority sisters, team members or senior students who may have difficulty grasping material. But even so, this still counts as cheating and may result in severe penalties for its perpetrators.
Cheating rates during online exams have skyrocketed and reached unprecedented heights. According to online proctoring data, one out of every 14 students caught violating exam rules were monitored remotely by remote proctors during this past year – this figure becomes alarming when considered alongside their awareness that they were being watched and recorded remotely by remote proctors.
However, even with methods available to combat this problem – like live online proctoring services – professors still may find it challenging to stay abreast of cheaters. Going site by site and requesting companies remove exam materials after an exam has been taken can take days for professors. Furthermore, pinpointing cheaters without analyzing data like response times and wrong-to-right answer conversion rates is impossible without professional psychometricians on board who can analyze your testing data to uncover suspicious patterns that are present.
2. Backtracking
Students may try to cheat during online exams by backtracking, which involves solving several smaller sub-problems to reach an answer. For instance, if an issue calls for the arrangement of x, y, and z in such a way that certain combinations don’t become valid, students could tackle each step in the process until they find an answer and return back to previous steps until finding one which may work better before solving new set of problems until reaching final answer.
Backtracking may not seem like intentional cheating, but it can still have an adverse effect on students’ ability to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding during exams. Unfortunately, due to no direct interaction with the proctor it’s difficult to detect. A recent study demonstrated this trend: students were more likely to cheat during online exams compared with traditional in-person examinations and it can be challenging for instructors to detect such instances of academic dishonesty.
Some institutions utilize remote proctoring software to ensure students do not access the internet during an exam or take pictures of their workspace, but this doesn’t prevent all forms of cheating. Students can still use excuses like poor connection or bathroom breaks as an opportunity to open notes, call friends and text answers back out to other test takers – making it hard to know whether these excuses are valid.
Students should keep academic integrity top of mind, noting that academic honesty involves more than simple honesty; it also takes into account fairness. Cheating can deprive both themselves and other students the chance to grow academically and personally.
Prior to an online exam, instructors should remind students about the institution’s academic integrity policies and penalties listed in their course syllabus. This may have an incredibly powerful psychological effect and help prevent some students from cheating; additionally it can be beneficial if different versions of an exam are offered so students don’t all take on identical questions.
3. Accessing Test Banks
Students may gain access to test banks that contain questions from textbook publishers that have been uploaded onto the internet and easily searchable by students. When used improperly, cheaters may use question banks to memorize answers and pass them off as their own during online exams – an act which could constitute academic dishonesty that damages an institution and its programs’ reputations.
Many lecturers rely on publisher test banks for creating exams and quizzes, trusting that each question selected from them relates directly to course content. Unfortunately, however, this form of testing opens the door to student cheating, particularly in remote classes where invigilators cannot monitor students during examinations. Some professors may take action if they discover students using test bank questions during an online examination; others do not, believing it unfair to those students who may not own the same textbook and thus don’t want to cheat just so they can receive higher grades.
Janke et al. conducted a study which demonstrated that students using verbatim test bank questions performed significantly better on exams than those using paraphrased ones, yet were less likely to comprehend the material presented, leading them to cheat more frequently than their counterparts who use paraphrased questions. Furthermore, honor codes and proctoring technology did not prove effective at decreasing rates of cheating for these verbatim questions.
Instructors can limit not only the number of questions in an online exam but also how long students have to complete it. This will ensure that students do not reuse answers from elsewhere and encourage them to apply their knowledge instead of simply recalling information. Instructors might also consider creating and uploading a short video outlining the rules and expectations for an exam as well as reviewing their institution’s academic integrity policy prior to starting an online examination. Evidence exists to support that such interventions have an emotional effect on students by reminding them of the consequences if they break academic integrity policies, and may discourage those planning on cheating from going ahead with it.
4. Asking Someone to Take the Exam
students taking online exams often use a classic tactic from movies and TV shows to cheat: asking someone else to take the exam on their behalf. This method works especially well when exams are administered remotely as impersonators can come directly into the exam room on behalf of candidates at times and dates not scheduled – something used extensively on standardized tests such as GMAT or GRE exams.
Students attempting to cheat in online exams often employ screen mirroring/sharing as another means of cheating, with this technique using one monitor to display exam content while another person knows all the answers and takes the exam on behalf of a candidate or student. Unfortunately, proctoring software often cannot detect this form of cheating when students use multiple monitors while concealing one from view.
Students may use virtual machines to attempt to cheat during online exams. This technique requires technical skill and is difficult to detect because proctoring software only looks at one operating system at a time; however, some students have created virtual machines during exams to search for answers through different browsers which were undetectable by proctoring software.
Some students taking remote courses tend to adopt a “get-the-answers, pass-the-class, move on” mentality that does not take into account how cheating could irreparably damage their long-term academic success. Others simply do not want to work hard enough, and online education makes it easier for them to cheat with no consequences whatsoever.
Colleges and universities are exploring various strategies to prevent cheating during online exams, using both software and hardware solutions to safeguard candidates against misuse of mobile devices. Some examples of such solutions include monitoring candidates’ mobile phone use including texting and calling; recording their performance during an exam to check for suspicious behaviors; psychometric forensics to detect unusual time patterns; as well as hidden cameras or microphones.